Neighbourhood Effects and the Welfare State. Towards a European research agenda

It is interesting from a policy perspective but also due to the existence of internationally unique types of data, which enable researchers to conduct large scale longitudinal studies on

Neighbourhood Effects and the Welfare State Towards a European research agenda?

Roger Andersson

Professor of Social & Economic Geography

Institute for Housing & Urban Research

Uppsala university, SwedenContact: Roger.Andersson@ibf.uu.se

Homepage: http://www.ibf.uu.se/PERSON/roger/roger.html

Paper for the conference“Neighbourhood Effects Studies

on the Basis of European Micro-data”

at Humboldt University of Berlin on March 29 and 30, 2007

Draft version, please do not quote

Over the past couple of decades, studies on the impact of neighbourhood compositions on the life chances of individuals are slowly gaining interest and also slowly providing new insights (for some overviews see: Jencks & Mayer 1990, Briggs 1997, Ellen & Turner 1997, Leventhal

& Brooks-Gunn 2000, Sampson et al 2002, Galster 2002, Friedrichs et al 2003) On both sides of the Atlantic, the interest is driven by academic and political debates about

segregation, integration and social mix (see for example Friedrichs 1998, Atkinson & Kintrea

2001, Buck 2001, Andersson 2001, Ostendorf et al 2001, Farwick et al 2002, Kearns & Parkes 2003, Galster 2007, Musterd et al 2003, Brännström 2006, and Musterd & Andersson

2005, 2006)

This paper takes its point of departure in one particular country, Sweden, a country that has pursued a social mix policy since the mid 1970s as an instrument to avoid further segregation.One may doubt the efficiency and criticise the lack of strong commitment by planners and local politicians in relation to this general aim but the country is an interesting case for

researching some of the underlying assumptions about neighbourhood compositions and social outcomes It is interesting from a policy perspective but also due to the existence of internationally unique types of data, which enable researchers to conduct large scale

longitudinal studies on individuals (in fact the entire population) Empirically, this paper will make use of results from a series of published and yet unpublished papers using the Swedish data resources.1 The paper will address four broad questions indicated in figure 1

1 Is there really a strong relation between housing mix and social mix? This is a

fundamental issue since planning for social mix is based on the assumption that the micro structures of the housing stock in terms of tenure, housing types, size and cost

of dwellings etc are thought to strongly influence the population composition of neighbourhoods

2 How does population composition of neighbourhoods affect residents’ social

interaction and behaviour?

3 Are social opportunities of individual residents related to their neighbourhood

context?

4 If there is such a relation, to what extent is this produced through local social

interaction? The idea is that social opportunities might be directly or indirectly

affected by residency

Three equally important questions arise if one wants to study these relations: What populationmix matters? What scale matters? What time matters? I will deal with these latter questions after having discussed figure 1 more in detail

Some readers might appreciate some contextual information on segregation patterns and processes in Sweden I have included an appendix that besides providing some relevant data also describes how these data are generated and can be used

1 Andersson, R (2001), Andersson, R & Bråmå, Å (2004), Andersson, R & Musterd, S (2005, 2006), Musterd

& Andersson (2005,2006, Andersson, R., Musterd, S., Galster, G & Kauppinen, T (2005), Musterd, S.,

Andersson, R., Galster, G & Kauppinen, T (2007), Galster, Kauppinen, Musterd & Andersson (fc).

Figure 1 A research programme on neighbourhood mix and neighbourhood effects.

up, but discussing innovative ways of research (What you’ll really do then, is another

question)

Housing mix and social mix

Usually few legal opportunities exist that allow politicians to create social mixes directly – this would require almost totalitarian regimes that are able to intervene in individual choices with quite some rigor (Borevi 2002, chapter 6, who analyses Swedish housing mix policies since 1975) Therefore, politicians tend to use housing and planning policy tools instead to reach their goals In short, the idea is that housing mix (a mix of housing types and tenure types) will create social mix (a mix of households according to their socio-economic position)and that this will create better social opportunities for individuals In fact, these debates are based on two crucial assumptions The first is that social mix really enhances the individual opportunities (i.e relations 3 and/or 4 in figure 1 are true) The second is that there is a strong relation between social mix and housing mix (relation 1 is true)

These issues are obviously firmly related to the actual plans and activities around the

restructuring of certain areas in cities Today, at least in many European cities, a large share ofurban restructuring plans is aimed at transforming large-scale post-war housing estates The areas in which these estates can be found tend to be rather homogeneous in terms of the type and tenure of the dwellings They are also often attracting households with a rather weak social position and many immigrants The dominant idea is that there is housing (type and tenure) homogeneity that creates social homogeneity (concentration of poor people) that reduces social opportunities for those who are living there So, the same set of assumptions applies for these estates and the people living in them It is worth noting that homogenous high-income areas are never considered to constitute problems for individuals or policy makers As Andersson (2000) shows in a countrywide analysis on housing segregation in Sweden, the geographical concentration of the rich is much stronger than that of the poor And

in Sweden, as probably elsewhere, the majority of all homogenous areas are dominated by

Global, National and Urban Contexts

The Micro Structure of the HousingStock (neighbourhoods’ composition

in terms of tenure and housing types)

Social and Ethnic composition of

home ownership In the Stockholm region 288,000 people live in neighbourhoods having more than 90% of the population in home ownership As a contrast, only 52,000 live in neighbourhoods having a similarly strong dominance of rental dwellings If more mix as such

is wanted, mixing the former seems to be an appropriate recommendation

From the literature we know that assumptions regarding the relation between housing mix, social mix and social opportunities are insufficiently tested There will be post-war estates with a homogeneous population where individuals appear to be socially blocked; where socialproblems and sometimes criminality characterize the daily lives of their inhabitants and where, from time-to-time social tensions get too high, occasionally even resulting in urban riots These estates are well known locally and often also highly stigmatized Yet, this does not automatically imply that all post-war housing estates are associated with these problems; neither does it mean that all socially homogeneous (and poor) estates or areas are associated with problems (Musterd & Andersson 2005)

In a paper on mixed housing policy, Musterd (2002, 140) argued that “…while social

processes may become manifest in a certain residential stock in a neighborhood, as rising levels of social segregation or as local spatial concentrations of poverty, that does not

necessarily imply that they are also caused by or being problems of the housing stock or of theneighborhood composition.” Musterd & Andersson (2005) find that relation (1) (see figure 1)

is rather weak in Sweden as a whole Further study is needed, not least studies that analyse therelation more in detail for cities of different size One may hypothesize that although the relation is quite weak at the national level it might very well be much stronger in the larger cities (as indicated by the Stockholm example above)

Social and ethnic mix and neighbourhood effects

Many researchers make use of Charles Manski´s (2000) distinction between three types of neighbourhood effects: endogenous, contextual (exogenous) and correlated (See Galster, 2006) If we face endogenous interactions, the propensity of an agent to behave in some way varies with the behaviour of the group In contextual interactions, the propensity of an agent

to behave in some way varies with exogenous characteristics of the group members

Correlated effects concern situations when agents in the same group tend to behave similarly because they have similar individual characteristics or face similar institutional environments

As concluded by Manski: “Endogenous and contextual interactions express distinct ways that agents might be influenced by their social environments, while correlated effects express a non-social phenomenon.” (Manski 2000, p 127)

Numerous versions of endogenous effects have been forwarded, including effects related to socialization, social networks, local competition over finite resources, and relative

deprivation Exogenous neighbourhood effects occur if the behaviours or attitudes of one neighbour depend on the exogenous (or predetermined, fixed) characteristics of the

individual’s neighbours, such as ethnicity, religion, or race For my purpose the distinction between endogenous and exogenous effects are not of immediate importance Both sets of effects relate to the population composition of a neighbourhood and both relate to the fact thatpeople interact locally and potentially have influence on each other (relation 2 and 4 in figure 1) Manski’s third type of possible effects, the correlated neighbourhood effect, is however interesting as it does not presuppose ideas about “contagion effects” or mechanisms related directly to the composition of households Correlated neighbourhood effects do not vary by alterations in neighbourhood household composition, but rather are determined by larger structural forces in the metropolitan area, like locations of jobs and geographic dis-amenities

and the structures of local government These external forces may impinge differentially on different neighbourhoods, but within any given neighbourhood they affect all residents

roughly equally, producing thereby correlations in neighbours’ outcomes (Galster 2006, Andersson, et al 2005) Such aspects of peoples’ environment are not ‘non-social’ –and certainly not non-political– but they do not stem from local human to human interaction Of course, the real effect of the external forces on individuals is depending on individual

resources and dispositions

What mix matters?

In a Swedish-Dutch collaboration, Roger Andersson and Sako Musterd have produced a series

of papers using the statistical database GeoSweden as the empirical foundation GeoSweden contains yearly demographic, socioeconomic, educational and geographical information on allpeople residing in Sweden 1990-2004 (later to be updated with information for 2005 and 2006) The first two papers (Musterd & Andersson 2005 and 2006 respectively) are based on the 1991 to 1999 period, and both attempts to analyse the existence and magnitude of

neighbourhood effects on (un)employment careers Both these papers confirm the existence ofsuch effects Figure 2 gives an overview of the relation between the percentage of

unemployed in the 500m by 500m neighbourhoods (entire country) and the percentage of all unemployed in 1991 who remain unemployed also in 1995 and 1999 The levels are different according to national origin but all categories experience a clear impact of the residential context (horizontal axis) The effects seem to be rather linear as unemployment increases from

2 to about 15 percent

In an enlarged collaboration, including also George Galster and Timo Kauppinen, Swedish data are used for examining several important issues in the neighbourhood effects discourse

In Andersson, Musterd, Galster and Kauppinen (2005) the authors address the crucial question

“What mix matters”? This paper explores the degree to which a wide variety of 1995

neighbourhood conditions in Sweden are statistically related to earnings for all adult

metropolitan and non-metropolitan men and women during the 1996-1999 period, controlling for a wide variety of personal characteristics They find that the extremes of the

neighbourhood income distribution, operationalised by the percentages of adult males with earnings in the lowest 30th and the highest 30th percentiles, hold greater explanatory power than domains of household mix related to education, ethnicity, or housing tenure Separating the effects of having substantial shares of low and high income neighbours, they find that it is the presence of the former that means most for metropolitan and non-metropolitan men and women, with the largest effects for metropolitan men

According to research findings in a recently finished EU-funded project, Urban Governance, Inclusion and Sustainability (UGIS), both area-based policies and most mix policies are now partly driven by the fear of ethnic clustering (Andersson 2003, Beaumont et al 2003) Our findings do not support the hypothesis that the ethnic dimension is the most crucial one in relation to employment and income prospects On the contrary, we find that the

socioeconomic composition of neighbourhoods is the most important dimension, at least in terms of individuals’ incomes It is however important to note that although these results clearly point at the conclusion that mix of income groups is the most important aspect, this is not necessarily true for other types of social outcomes (educational achievements, crime, social cohesion etc.)

Figure 2 Percentage unemployed staying unemployed in 1995 and 1999, per environment type, per country of birth.

Source: Musterd, S & Andersson, R., 2006.

A special aspect of the what mix matters issue relates to local concentration of immigrants A Musterd, Andersson, Galster and Kauppinen (fc) paper addresses the role of ethnic clusters in relation to immigrants’ income development Differences in immigrant economic trajectories have been attributed to a wide variety of factors One of these is the local spatial context where immigrants reside This spatial context assumes special salience in light of expanding public exposure to and scholarly interest in “ethnic enclaves” Does concentrating immigrantsaid or retard their chances for improving their economic standing? In this paper the authors contribute clear statistical evidence relevant to answering this vital question They develop multiple measures of the spatial context in which immigrants reside and assess their

contribution to average earnings of immigrant individuals in the three large Swedish

metropolitan areas, controlling for individual and regional labour market characteristics Theyuse unusually rich longitudinal information about Swedish immigrants during the 1995-2002 period They find no evidence (with one exception) that own-group ethnic enclaves in Swedentypically enhance the income prospects of its resident immigrants, unless individuals use the enclave for a short-term place from which to launch themselves quickly into different milieus

What scale matters?

In the wider literature on the relationship between man and environment some argue that the direct neighbourhood of individuals has lost significance, especially for life chances and social opportunities of the adult population Fischer (1982), for example, stated that people tend to become socially integrated through differentiated, looser networks at different scales Increased affluence, but also wider access to the rest of society or even the world, through higher levels of individual mobility and through the explosion of telecommunications and internet connections in particular, would have resulted in a diminishing role of the local environment in the daily lives of most people (Castells 1989) Blokland (2003), who applied

in-depth interviews, found that the local environment had only minor impact on significant social interaction between different population categories However, others state that the local environment still plays a significant role Neighbourhoods tie people both socially and

spatially, if only on functional grounds Janowitz (1974) and Suttles’ (1973) ‘community of limited liability’ clearly fits these ideas about the role of the local neighbourhood They state that (middle-class) neighbours come together, work together and become active and influence each other when they regard that as necessary; if not, they live a preferably silent and peacefullocal life Bridge, Forrest and Holland (2004), who summarised the research evidences on neighbouring, state that “The evidence for the widely held perception that neighbourliness is declining is in fact mixed.” (p 39)

Dietz (2002) observes that “neighbourhood definitions have typically not been formed by thoughtful theoretical considerations Rather neighbourhood delineation has been defined by the limitations of an available data set” (p541; see also Burgess et al 2001)

The ‘what scale matters’ question is highly relevant to the more general ‘does neighbourhood matter’ question That is, if the ‘wrong scale’ is used in neighbourhood effect studies, we easily may arrive at wrong conclusions about neighbourhood effects; we may over- or

underestimate them Then the question should be asked whether that conclusion holds when other scales are applied This ‘wrong scale’ argument may be applicable to a detailed Swedishneighbourhood effect study by Brännström (2006) He analysed neighbourhood effects on income and receipt of social assistance The empirical material (register data derived from the Stockholm Birth Cohort Study) provided a unique opportunity to analyse repeated

information on both outcomes and place of residence for the cohort of Stockholmers born in

1953 during a 50-year period With the use of longitudinal multilevel modelling, this study explored the inter-dependence of the observations by partitioning the total variance into different components of variation due to various hierarchical levels in the data In the

extensive longitudinal multilevel analyses the author worked simultaneously with two spatial levels (i.e census areas and parishes) These areas have different territorial scopes He

concluded “the major message of this study is that it is people and time point of measurement,rather than place of residence, that matter Put simply, it matters more who you are than whereyou are At least where the outcomes addressed in this study are concerned, this may indicate that it is primarily people and their households that should be the focus of policy efforts to alleviate disproportions in social and economic opportunities.” (Brännström 2006,

Introduction) However, both the census tracts and the parishes are socially very

heterogeneous and also large-scale areas Social processes and relevant interactions between people may not occur at these levels, but at much smaller levels instead

Ruth Lupton (2003) has reviewed part of the British and American studies on neighbourhood effects and discusses scale issues and the possibility of bringing qualitative and quantitative neighbourhood research closer together Concerning the quantitative studies, she states that

“The geographical units of analysis used are often acknowledged to be too large

to have any explanatory power.” (Lupton 2003, p 9) A study carried out by Johnston et al (2004) is very interesting from this perspective They focused on scale and neighbourhood effects on voting behaviour and applied the British Household Panel Study They created

‘bespoke’ neighbourhoods, local areas defined for each individual separately; these

environments were built up with enumeration district data Two different types of bespoke neighbourhoods were created: by different numbers of nearest population around the

respondent’s home (neighbourhoods with nearest 500 around the individual; neighbourhoods with nearest 1000 around the individual, etc); and by different distances from the respondent’s

home (population within 250 m, population within 500m, etc.; see also Musterd, Ostendorf &

De Vos 2003 and Musterd & Andersson 2006 in which similar types of bespoke

neighbourhoods are used) Their arguments to do so were based on the idea that separate mechanisms and processes may operate at different scales Among other things they found that there were simultaneous wide-area and highly local neighbourhood effects; labour voting was greater in more deprived areas, but especially so in pockets of extreme deprivation The authors conclude that: “there are many hypotheses regarding neighbourhood effects in

geographical and related literatures, but their successful testing has been hampered by the absence of relevant data In particular, analysts have lacked data on both individuals and their neighbourhood milieus, which allow the interactions of different types of people in different kinds of local context to be explored Furthermore, most analyses of neighbourhood effects have been significantly constrained by the nature of the areas for which data are available In many cases these are relatively large and in almost all cases no data are available to explore variations in the nature and strength of the sought-for effects at different scales” (Johnston et

al 2004, p 367)

These statements were the drivers behind a recent Andersson & Musterd (2006) paper in which the question is raised:

“to what extent individual social mobility of adults is influenced by individual and

neighbourhood characteristics, with a special focus on various levels of scale and various definitions of area compositions.”

It is reasonable to assume that if endogenous neighbourhood effects are in operation, such

effects would be greater in the immediate surrounding of an individual and they would

decrease as the size of the unit increases However, for correlated effects it is more difficult to

hypothesize which level would be the most important and the spatiality can also be expected

to vary according to which outcome we decide to study In our case, focusing on labour market-related outcomes, both the existence of spatial mismatch (no jobs available nearby, uneven public transportation services etc) and uneven support provided to people who are

unemployed or in need of job information services can be expected to be more influential at

the municipal and urban district levels than at the level of the immediate surrounding of individuals Or put the other way around: at higher levels of geographical scale we expect

endogenous effects to be less strong than they are at the scale of peoples’ closest environment

If correlated effects exist at higher levels (municipality, urban district) they would exist also atlower levels, adding up to more strong neighbourhood effects at the lowest geographical scale

There is, however, one particular aspect of correlated effects that might operate primarily at lower geographical scales, namely spatial stigmatization Galster (2006) identifies

stigmatization both as a type of endogenous effect and as a correlated effect: “Endogenous stigmatization of a place transpires when important institutional, governmental or market actors negatively stereotype all residents of a place and/or reduce the flows of resources flowing into the place because of its household composition This might occur as the

percentage of households in some disadvantaged ethnic group in the neighbourhood exceeds the threshold of where they are perceived by these external actors as “dominant.” (… )

“External stigma: certain neighbourhoods may be stigmatized regardless of their current population because of their history, environmental or topographical dis-amenities, style, scale and type of dwellings, or condition of their commercial districts and public spaces.” (Galster

2006, p 8) It is highly plausible that both types of stigmatization occur at a relatively low geographical scale, such as neighbourhoods and maybe urban districts

In this study we operationalized ‘neighbourhood’ at four spatial scales, running from the municipality, over an officially existing neighbourhood definition (SAMS) to coordinate-based bespoke neighbourhoods (environments constructed individual by individual on the basis of coordinate information; 500 meter and 100 meter around each individual,

respectively) Using multivariate statistical techniques on employment and income

development 1995-2002 for all inhabitants residing in Sweden’s three largest urban regions, controlling for a wide variety of personal and household characteristics, we were able to confirm our basic hypothesis that contextual effects on labour market performance are

strongest at the very local level and non-existent or weak at the municipal level We were also able to show –indirectly– that stigmatization probably plays a significant role By analysing a subset of politically targeted poor neighbourhoods we found neighbourhood effects to be much stronger there compared to what we found for non-targeted (presumably much less stigmatized) neighbourhoods From a policy point of view this result indicates that mixing policies should aim at the micro neighbourhood level

What time matters?

There are several types of time issues that so far have not been subject to systematically designed empirical analyses First of all, some of the theories concerning neighbourhood effects suggest that we should expect instant effects for people residing in particular contexts Most of the correlated effects (spatial mis-match, external stigmatization etc) would have more or less instant impact on for example labour market performance The same apply for some of the endogenous effects (social networks, local competition over finite resources, and maybe also relative deprivation) Other effects would probably appear as a result of a longer period of exposure to certain environments (socialisation and other processes affecting

behaviour and related to local social interaction) Secondly, effects might also last for shorter

or longer periods, so that some would disappear if a person moves out of the specific context while other could last for years and maybe even decades regardless of later trajectories

(certainly correlated effects on health due to bad environmental conditions, such as air

pollution, water quality or nuclear-related radiation, but maybe also labour market careers as related to educational achievements in younger ages)

Sweden is a welfare state with high ambitions to allocate resources according to needs I have hypothesized that neighbourhood effects in countries like Sweden are probably less

pronounced compared to countries having less high ambitions in this regard (Andersson 2001) But there is also another aspect of urban Sweden that speaks in favour of this

hypothesis In some countries, I get the impression that moving out of poor neighbourhoods is

a difficult thing and that many are stuck in less resourceful environments for longer periods, maybe even for life and across generations This is certainly not the case in Sweden and I will end this paper by proving further evidence on the dynamic nature of Swedish neighbourhoods(see also Andersson & Bråmå 2004) I have chosen two adjacent neighbourhoods in the Stockholm region, located in the north-western part of the capital city (see appendix 2 for a map of the area) One of these neighbourhoods is a quite typical middle-class area,

comprising predominantly home owners in single housing having a medium to high level of income Consequently, few are unemployed This area, Spånga, has about 6,600 residents The adjacent area, Tensta, is one of Sweden´s most immigrant-dense housing estates, home for about 17,000 people Many are unemployed and rely on social allowances The average level of income is very low Tensta has been targeted by both state-funded and municipality-funded restructuring programmes since many years

In figure 2-4 I display results of a longitudinal study 1990-2004 of the 1990 cohort for

respective area The figures show year by year and per age group who may remain in the area.The very high mobility among younger people is a very distinct feature; half of the 20-29 years old have left after only about three years After 14 years, less than two out of ten remain.Besides the 20-29 year old, out migration is at a higher level in the poor housing estate

compared to the middle-class area While of 50 percent of the original cohort had left Spånga

by the year 2000, 50 percent of the 1990 Tensta residents had left already in 1996 By the end

of the period, 27 percent still live in Tensta, while 38 percent remain in Spånga Figure 4 shows similar data for a number of specific one year age groups (age 5, 15, 25, 35, 45 and 55

Figure 3 Neighbourhood staying frequencies 1990-2004 for the 1990 population of Tensta in Stockholm city (area code 1800151; N= 15567 in 1990; 4206 in 2004).

Source: GeoSweden 2004, Institute for Housing & Urban Research, Uppsala university.Figure 3 Neighbourhood staying frequencies 1990-2004 for the 1990 population of Tensta in Stockholm city (by one year age groups*)

*Cohort sizes in 1990: age 5: 271 persons, age 15: 212, age 25: 291, age 35: 285, age 45: 220, age 55: 102.

Source: GeoSweden 2004, Institute for Housing & Urban Research, Uppsala university

These data put the issue of neighbourhood effects in an interesting perspective If one is interested in effects that are believed to be caused by long term exposure to a certain

population mix one may chose to focus only on stayers during a certain period However if that period is rather long, only a selected minority will qualify I will also hypothesize that the self selection bias thus probably gets bigger (i.e the problem of unmeasured personal

characteristics) However, the dynamic feature of neighbourhoods also opens up possibilities

to systematically study possible time lags in effects attributable to residency What is the difference of being “exposed” to a particular type of neighbourhood during one, three, five or ten years? Swedish data can be used for these types of empirical studies but whether one in fact can attribute a particular outcome to a historical neighbourhood context, controlling for subsequent developments and contexts, is easier said than done It is by no means an easy methodological task

Conclusions

This paper summarizes some of the basic questions that appear both in the neighbourhood effect literature and in planning practices and policy discourses It draws on a series of studiesusing Swedish data

Clarifying the relation between housing mix and social mix is one important issue Not only does this relation vary with national and urban contexts, it is probably also shaped by local and regional path dependencies (timing of new construction, balance of supply/demand on thehousing market etc) What housing mix that seems to produce a particular form of social mix

in one city at one particular point in time does not necessary produce the same outcome in another city or even in the same city five years later So even if we indeed knew much more about what social mix would be beneficial for optimizing particular social outcomes it would not be easy to know how to produce such a mix

In Sweden, some evidence point in the direction that neighbourhood effects indeed exist and that they sometimes are quite strong Other evidence point towards much less effects The lack of consensus arises partly out of methodological differences, not least the use of differentgeographical scales Penetrating further the issue of what scale matters in different urban contexts is not only wishful for expanding our knowledge about causalities and how certain mechanisms might operate, it is necessary if research results should be used for informing policy makers (planning for mix) Finally, yet another basic question should be raised in future neighbourhood effects studies, namely the time issue This also relates to hypotheses about causality: effects now or later, effects due to instant exposure or cumulative exposure? I have provided some empirical data on neighbourhood population dynamics, data that confirm the need of taking the time issue into consideration

Not all countries have data resources of the Swedish kind Realising this, there are still many types of studies that can be conducted without such data I would in particular welcome more – also international comparative – studies that look into the black box of especially

endogenous neighbourhood effects Such studies would require collecting primary data on thegeography of social interaction and how that might differ across social, ethnic and

demographic strata and in different urban contexts

a) The general and frequent use of a personal ID code (personnummer), used in all

official registers A similar code is used for firms

b) Constantly updated addresses register (Register över totalbefolkningen, RTB); link to

the ID code mentioned in (a)

c) A geo-coded real estate and property register, linked to the address register

(fastighetsregistren).

d) Accessibility legislation

By merging (1), (2), and (3) all residents in Sweden can be localised both in terms of housing and work places This allows for studying not only static distributions at any point in time but

also events An individuals’ housing and working career can thus be studied both socially and

geographically Obviously, both migration and commuting can be studied using complete populations If a person moves it will show up in the address register and due to the fact that all addresses refer to specific and geocoded buildings, the exact location will be known

The individual-specific ID code comprises 10 digits and is given to everyone upon birth or immigration (permanent residents) This code is used by Statistics Sweden in all individual registers, such as the employment, income, population, education, and the event registers (birth, death, immigration, emigration), which makes it possible to (1) merge information from different sources, and (2) carry out longitudinal analyses based on the entire population.The geocoding of all real estates took several decades to finish and this crucial part of the registers was not completed until about 1990

A final word on data accessibility: It is not difficult to realise that these data are “sensitive” and the use is of course restricted in several ways However, there is an important paragraph

in the Swedish data security legislation saying that access to the registers should be

generously provided to researchers Applications from researchers are scrutinised by a special committee at Statistics Sweden, and also by regional research ethics committees, who decides

if permission could be given and if certain restrictions should apply Some restrictions are of amore general character, for instance that data on individuals or firms provided to researchers never contain the explicit ID code and that specific individuals should not be identifiable in publications Furthermore, the most detailed geocodes (coordinates) are seldom provided, andresearchers normally have to settle with 100m by 100m coordinates (which of course still is a very detailed level) There are often also restrictions on handing out specific codes for the country of birth information, and researchers may have to settle with aggregates (world

2 This appendix makes extensive use of a paper presented at the workshop “Ethnic Segregation in Germany and Europe: What do we know about its extent and about links between residential segregation and integration?” Friday, 31 March 2006, Programme on Intercultural Conflicts and Societal Integration (AKI),